Blog: ACDSEH021

How would you measure up?
With the outbreak of war in August 1914, Australia began an official recruiting effort to raise an army to send overseas. However, the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), as it was named, would not take just anyone. It was intended to be a force of skilled, experienced soldiers, chosen from "the fittest, strongest, and most ardent in the land".1
Recruits being medical examined at Victoria Barracks.
With 820,000 …

The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 August 1914. It took days for confirmation of Britain's entry into the war to reach Australia, even though mobilisation was already underway.
How did it come to this?
In the midst of an election campaign, and with large parts of Australia suffering record drought, few Australians who read the newspapers on 29 June 1914 would have paid much attention to the assassination of an obscure foreign prince. Yet …

This sound reel brings together five Australian soldiers from the First World War. They recall their memories of recruitment and enlistment into the first Australian Imperial Force (AIF), 1914 - 1919.
When war was declared in 1914, Australia needed to raise a military force to fight overseas and calling for volunteers, raised the AIF. Australian men enlisted enthusiastically at the start of the war, however, with the high number of …